Quds Force

U.S. officials from President Bush to a top general in Baghdad said Wednesday that there was no solid evidence that high-ranking officials in Iran had ordered deadly weapons to be sent to Iraq for use against American troops, backing away from claims made by military and intelligence officials in Baghdad this week. But Bush continued to maintain an aggressive posture toward Tehran, saying elite Iranian Quds Force operatives were supplying weapons to insurgents in Iraq.

Among the myriad military and intelligence agencies that make up Iran's security forces, none has the skill and reach of the Quds Force, an elite unit nominally within the command structure of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The sectarian violence engulfing Iraq will only grow worse if the U.S. abandons its current military strategy and begins to withdraw its forces, the top American war commander said Thursday. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, speaking at a Pentagon news conference, said he was trying to steer clear of the "political minefields" of Washington and avoided any direct comment on the political showdown between Congress and the White House over Iraq.

The Bush administration plans to announce an unprecedented package of unilateral sanctions against Iran today, including the designation of its Revolutionary Guard Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and of the elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism, according to senior administration officials. The sanctions, to be announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., mark the first time that the U.S.

An Iraqi official said Friday that he expected another round of talks this month including his government and those of Washington and Tehran, after the U.S. military freed nine Iranians it had detained in Iraq. Two of the Iranians released early Friday by the U.S. were among five men detained in January in an American raid in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. The U.S.